From the Ashes
by Mooseymoose
Summary: SELF-INSERTION: You are the last of a lost demon race, and Hiei is your mentor while you resdie in Genkai's temple. As is usual with Hiei, he does a lot of crap to make people angry, especially you. Rated M just in case.


**I've also decided to make it a sort of self-narration, so instead of some banal third party reading off what you do, the tone is more of a comment from your own mouth. See what I mean?**

The energy building inside of you was so intense your blood was swimming with endorphins and adrenaline. It wasn't exactly painful, just…uncomfortable. It felt like the energy was too large for your comparatively small body to contain it all, resulting in a claustrophobic sensation not unlike crawling through an air vent. This was going to be a powerful blast, for sure. Maybe even enough to singe that evil little runt Hiei. Hey, there was an idea.

For your own personal amusement, you turned in his direction and held your glowing arm in his direction, the equivalent of making a funny face at someone behind their back. Except that this wasn't behind their back, because to your chagrin you realized that Hiei was not looking apathetically into the distance as you'd hoped and expected him to be, but rather, staring right at you. The cold amusement in his eyes dissolved your beautiful fantasy of knocking him on his ass and paying him back for all the humiliation and snide comments from the last four months.

For the first seventeen and a half years of your life, you'd been an average human. After your parents were killed in a car wreck at age 10, you became a ward of an orphanage in a city a few hours outside of Genkai's temple. You realized something was up, when, 6 months before your 18th birthday, you discovered that feathers in hues of orange, red and gold were growing overtop of your average (color) hair and that you were unintentionally setting your bed on fire at least once a day. Unfortunately, what you were later told were demons began stalking you at around the same time, so all the time you could have been pondering your transformation was instead spent running for your life.

But someone was looking out for you. A few days after your 18th birthday, after months spent wearing oversize hats and sleeping on the floor, while packing your belongings in preparation for your departure from the orphanage, you were approached by a tall, blue-haired girl who introduced herself as Botan. The story she told you was outrageous, but strangely enough, made sense in the wake of your bizarre ordeal.

You were a member of a demon species long thought to be extinct: the Phoenix. Phoenix were a higher class that had the rare ability to mix both demon and spirit energy and travel as a fiery bird among the three worlds easily and without portals. As legend went, they could rise back to life after death and heal almost any wound with their tears. For these specialties, many other demon classes hunted them to what, again, was believed to be extinction.

King Yama of the Spirit World sent for you after hearing rumors of your possible existence. He wished to hone your skills in the hope that you would be a useful asset and that you would, maybe, help to find other Phoenix.

They were technically classified as fire demons, capable of great power, yada yada yada, which was why Koenma summoned Hiei from his position in the demon world. Koenma believed his skills as an A class demon, as well as a fire demon, would make him the best possible candidate as your mentor.

Everyone you met at Genkai's temple: Yuskuke, Keiko, Kuwabara, Kurama, Botan, Shizuru, and Yukina, all became close with you soon after your arrival, so you had expectations for Hiei to be of a similar mold. Not so.

Not that they hadn't warned you (Kuwabara especially). From the way they semi-fondly spoke of him, you were expecting someone a little testy, but not _impossible. _You were expecting someone similar to yourself; someone with a quick mouth and a quick temper, but not irrational.

Hiei didn't have a quick mouth. No, his words were few and far between, but they were carefully crafted, thought out, so that they struck you hard in the gut at the same time that you realized he meant every word. To say that he had a quick temper was unnecessary, because there was never a time where he _didn't _have a temper, except for, maybe, when he was asleep. Maybe, although his dreams were probably dark and mean as well.

Many times he complained about having to train a half-breed. See, rather than just orphaned once, you were orphaned _twice. _The first time was at birth, when you were abandoned by your birth parents, one of which was a human, and the other of which was apparently a Phoenix, albeit a not full-blooded one. The parents killed in the car accident were your adoptive parents.

Your comebacks sucked, too. You usually came up with pretty decent ones, hours later, when they were basically useless. At the time of the actual offense, your most common comeback was, "I'm taller than you and I'M A GIRL." Well, barely taller. An inch or two. Still, it was nice to know that after being the shortest one in school all your life, there was someone shorter.

Yes, he was an ass, and the only people you could really complain about it with were the guys. With the boys, you could crack jokes and snicker, but the girls had something nice to say about everyone, so complaining to them was useless.

Now, Hiei's mouth curled into a smirk at your childishness, making your face burn.

"Brilliant, Nix," he drawled, "Every day you continue to impress me with your wealth of maturity."

Nix was what they called you. It had begun as a Yusuke joke and had quickly evolved into your official title. Coming from everyone else's mouth it was welcome, a sign of camaraderie. But everything coming out of Hiei's mouth sounded wrong.

And he had the nerve to comment on _your_ maturity?


End file.
